1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to technology that ejects ink drops and prints an image on a printing medium, and particularly relates to printing technology for which it is possible to record one pixel with a plurality of types of dot sizes.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, as computer output devices, printers that eject ink from the nozzle of a printing head have become widely popular. Among these printers, for example as disclosed in Unexamined Patent No. 2000-1001, multiple value printers have also been realized that are able to form a plurality of types of ink dots of different sizes. With multiple value printers, it is possible to express many gradations with each pixel using a plurality of types of ink dots of different sizes such as small dots and large dots, for example.
However, depending on the printing environment, there are cases when formation of specific ink dots is not desirable. For example, depending on the used ink type, because the ink viscosity is too high, there is the problem that there is too much variation in the dot size or the dots cannot be formed, and this becomes a cause of degradation of image quality.